Richard Will, et al. v. Susan Hallock, et al. (546 U.S. 345)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 18, 2006 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 546 U.S. 345 · 126 S. Ct. 952
- Decided
- January 18, 2006
- Term
- October Term 2005
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Souter
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court. The authority of the Courts of Appeals to review “all final decisions of the district courts,” 28 U. S. C. § 1291, includes appellate jurisdiction over “a narrow class of decisions that do not terminate the litigation,” but are sufficiently important and collateral to the merits that they should “nonetheless be treated as final,” Digital Equipment Corp. v. Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U. S. 863, 867 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). The issue here is whether a refusal to apply the judgment bar of the Federal Tort Claims Act is open to collateral appeal. We hold it is not. I The complaint alleges that Susan Hallock owned a computer software business that she and her husband, Richard, operated from home. After information about Richard Hal-lock’s credit card was stolen and used to pay the subscription fee for a child pornography Web site, agents of the United States Customs Service, investigating the Web site, traced the payment to Richard Hallock’s card and got a warrant to search the Halloeks’ residence. With that authority, they seized the Halloeks’ computer equipment, software, and disk drives. No criminal charges were ever brought, but the Government’s actions produced a different disaster. When the computer equipment was returned, several of the disk drives were damaged, all of the stored data (including trade…
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